


Risk Assessment

by ancestrallizard



Series: Risk Assessment [1]
Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, mentions of death but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13330080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: It did not take Kazuya to realize that he was being followed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A very late christmas gift fic for ps2nocturne

It did not take Kazuya to realize that he was being followed. An itch on the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably when he was alone, a reaction honed by long experience being around people and demons who hid before ambushing him and, usually, trying to kill him. What trips he took on his own on own outside of cities and settlements had become disturbingly easy–few demons approached him, much less attacked. He never saw or heard anything out of the ordinary, and blamed his absent eye, a token from a Cathedral battle, at least in part for that. Questioning some demons in the area he’d met always produced the same answer, that that they felt something strange in the area, but they couldn’t see, hear, or smell what it was. Yuka hadn’t noticed anything when she was alone, and she was better at sensing out danger than he was. Whatever it was was out to get him alone.

He first noticed it after he and Yuka had left Kanto. It’d been her idea. There were too many bad memories around Tokyo for the both of them, and finding somewhere new, where not nearly as many people knew them, might put them both at ease. They’d been moving steadily north of Tokyo for months, and it’d worked for most part – people knew of the Great Cathedral pretty widely, and of the two who stopped the Gaean and Messian faction leaders, but the farther they got from the city the less people connected those figures to Yuka and Kazuya in person. Kazuya appreciated the new anonymity, but the sight of areas outside of Tokyo stopped any real happiness from taking root. The bombing spanned the entire country, and many areas were hit much worse than Tokyo, so that the effects were apparent even thirty-one years after the fact. The feeling of being watched hadn’t set until they were well past Tokyo and out of Kanto, so he didn’t think he’d been followed from there. He didn’t’ think it was a malevolent entity – it had plenty of opportunities to attack him and never did – but its continued presence couldn’t be ignored.

They were approaching a more densely populated region after a long stretch of emptiness, and Kazuya didn’t want to risk the mysterious presence leaving before he really knew who or what it was. While they were still in an isolated stretch of ruined suburbs and woods, he told Yuka his admittedly shoddy idea for finding the thing. While she let him know, repeatedly, that she didn’t like it, she agreed to wait away from him and only go to him if he needed help.

He backtracked the next day with Pascal through a ruined neighborhood they’d passed through the day before. It was overcast, and the first frost was heavy in the air and on the yellow stunted grass. A few houses were on their last rotting legs, but the bombings, flooding, and time, had reduced most to their foundations. They’d become the homes of small animals and colonies of lower level demons, and would soon to be overgrown with weeds entirely. Old picture frames, broken toys, and other pieces of sentimental junk littered the ground like leaves, things too functionally useless for scavengers to want. It was the mirror image of too many places in Tokyo, in Japan, and the sight of it filled him with a hollow numbness.

The back of his neck itched again, and area went silent except for his and Pascal’s feet over the rubble, as if all other sound had been sucked out with a vacuum. Almost painfully cognizant of being watched now, Kazuya moved to ground in the epicenter what must have been a massive house, and was reminded of stepping onto a stage. Pascal sat down next to him, ears pricked and paws shifting.

“Please, show yourself,” He asked the surrounding emptiness. “I won’t hurt you, as long as you don’t try to hurt me. I just want to talk.”

His voice echoed and died unheeded, but the sensation of being watched didn’t leave. He stroked the thick fur on Pascal’s head, though he didn’t know whether the gesture was meant to comfort him or his demon. 

It was because he was scratching between Pascal’s ears that he felt the demon go rigid as all his muscles tensed simultaneously. The onset of a growl vibrated through his chest as he stared down a building husk in front of them. Kazuya stayed still, though he itched to have some kind of weapon ready. “Hello?” 

A solitary figure came out from behind the ruined house and sauntered towards them. He appeared human, or humanoid at least, not much taller than Kazuya with tattoos like black stripes that covered the exposed skin of his arms and face and unclothed torso. In fact, the only clothes he wore were shorts and threadbare shoes. 

The familiar sharpened awareness of the fight-or-flight reaction set in, and Pascal shared the same sentiment. He’d gotten to his feet, fur along his spine bristling, more aggressive than Kazuya had ever seen him outside of battles with particularly powerful demons. The closer the stranger got, the louder Pascal growled, until he stopped before Kazuya and his demon was snarling, ears flat against his head and lips curled back. 

The stranger, apparently unconcerned with the demon flashing 6-inch canines at him, focused on Kazuya. His eyes had bright yellow irises with vertically slit cat-like pupils, both hallmarks of humans who had fused themselves with demons. 

“Are you Kazuya?” His canine teeth, sharp and yellow, were just visible he spoke. 

“Yes,” Kazuya answered, and pet Pascal on the head. (He still didn’t want to start anything if he could help it). Pascal stopped growling, but his fur didn’t lie flat. 

The half demon blinked at him, brow furrowed, and his pupils narrowed slightly. “The same Kazuya who defeated Michael and Asura Oh at the Great Cathedral? That Kazuya?”

He nodded. The stranger kept staring, then actually circled him once quickly like a suspicious animal. Kazuya saw that a small black spike grew from the back of his neck, just below his skull. He forced himself to stay calm, and made a concentrated effort not to raise his weapon as the half-demon passed through Kazuya’s blind spot. He’d fought, and killed, half-demons before, and he’d do it again if he had to.

Inspection finished, the stranger looked him up and down, frustrated as if Kazuya were hiding the rest of himself away for some reason. “ _You’re_ Kazuya,” He muttered to himself. 

A fight seemed out of the picture, but the atmosphere hadn’t diffused by a long shot. Pascal’s reaction and his own intuition told him that if a fight did break out, it wouldn’t go well for him. Slowly, Kazuya put down the bag he’d been carrying and reached into it, every movement broadly telegraphed in the hopes the half-demon didn’t think he was trying to pull a weapon on him. He’d been saving this for if he ended up in a more traditional demon negotiation, but it still might curry favor and offset chances of violence. 

The first freezing raindrops of the impending storm started to fall. The heavy droplets pelted Kazuya’s scalp, the nape of his neck, and the amber glass of the almost full bottle he pulled from the bag and offered to the half-demon.

“Do you want a drink?”

For the first time, the stranger’s expression changed to something that wasn’t a variation on confusion or disappointment. 

 

\-----

 

Despite calling the beer ‘the worst shit he’d ever drank’, the stranger kept the bottle after his initial taste and gave no indication he was giving it back anytime soon (He was right about the alcohol – most of the affordable stuff was still made from anything you could find and ferment, and taste wasn’t usually considered).

He took an occasional sip as they stood in the one building in the area that some miracle still had a roof, albeit a leaky one. Kazuya usually wouldn’t have gone into such a confined space with someone he was still suspicious of, but the same intuition that told him he was being followed gave him the feeling that the stranger wasn’t going to hurt him. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was all he had to go on sometimes. Pascal, however, was not giving him the benefit of the doubt. He rested away from the entrance, head on his paws, and didn’t take his eyes from the stranger for a second, ready to attack if the half-demon so much as breathed wrong. 

The half-demon tapped his claw like fingernails on the glass of the bottle in soft rhythm as he watched the rain from the shadows of the house. Kazuya, meanwhile, processed the story he’d just been told.

Kazuya wasn’t sure what it said of him that he accepted the half-demon’s story of coming from another world’s Tokyo that had undergone its own demonic apocalypse, and that a kind of Network in his own world allowed him to move between worlds, except that it meant he’d seen and heard too many bizarre things in his short life for it to be especially out of the ordinary. It was too strange and unnecessarily complicated to be a lie. 

He understood how the demon came to that world, but still had trouble parsing out why. “So you wanted to fight me?” 

He shrugged in what might have been a ‘yes’ and took another swing of alcohol. It wasn’t so disagreeable now, apparently. 

“Why?” he asked, and asked another thing he’d been wondering, “And why me and not Yuka?” 

“I heard more about you,” the stranger replied. This close, his demonic nature was even more apparent in the subtle difference of bone and muscle in his face and arms. “You show up out of nowhere, killing people and demons, got more people wondering about you than her. I wanted to see what you were like, but I started thinking I got the wrong person. Hoped you might be some kind of challenge, but – “ He gestured vaguely to Kazuya, and Kazuya bit down the urge to apologize for not living up to whatever figure that rumors and stories had built him up to be. 

“Thought you’d be different up close, but you’re way weaker than I thought you’d be. There wouldn’t be much point.” He swallowed the rest of the drink, and then threw the bottle outside. It sailed a fair distance before it smashed to pieces on the ground. The rain had petered out, and the sun was beginning to reappear from behind the dissipating clouds.

“Where will you go now?”

Kazuya was close enough to see his pupils change shape when he looked outside. “Explore more of this world. Maybe find better beer.”

The stranger glanced at him sidelong, and Kazuya felt something stir in pit of his stomach that he dismissed as leftover nerves. He didn’t say anything else, and left through the hole in the wall. Kazuya follow right after him, Pascal on heels, but he’d disappeared as quickly and completely as if he’d evaporated under the cold autumn sun. There was nothing but footprints to mark that the half-demon had been there at all, and it all left Kazuya feeling like he’d had a bizarre waking dream. It was only later that night, when he recounted the strange experience to Yuka, that he realized he’d forgotten to ask the stranger’s name.


	2. Chapter 2

Kazuya was examining a display case of notched and frankly overpriced pocketknives in a weapons shop when someone pressed in close on his left to peer at the same case. This had happened a few times already, as it was fairly crowded due to it being the only good blade shop for miles. He almost moved away to give the person more space before he saw yellow slit pupiled eyes reflected back at him from the glass of the case. 

He turned, wide-eyed, to face the stranger he’d met weeks before, who was nonchalantly looking into the case as if he always shopped there. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt. He’d never reappeared after he first showed himself, and Kazuya spent the rest of his and Yuka’s journey to the city without seeing him again (though ‘city’ might be a too strong word for the array of tents, half-standing buildings, and underground bunkers the dotted the hilltop), and he had wondered more than once where the half-demon had gone. He didn’t know the stranger’s name, so couldn’t call him anything other than, “You.” 

“Me.” His gaze was just as intense as it was the last time Kazuya had seen him. (He wasn’t acting aggressive, but he was still close, too close, and Kazuya was alone in the shop and in the time it would take Kazuya to summon a demon he could be attacked and killed twice over).

He turned back to the display case. “ I want you to help me buy a gun.”

And with that, all the lingering fear was superseded by confusion. “What?” 

“A gun.” He repeated slowly, as if Kazuya didn’t know what a gun was. “I want one, but I don’t know which would be good to get. I’ll pay for it.” 

Kazuya still had several questions to that, most being a variation on ‘why’, but the stranger already looked fairly impatient. “I can, but I was planning on going to a few other places first…”

The half demon nodded. “I’ll go with you until you’re ready, then.” He said, and left, after looking at some of the hunting knives by the far wall.

Kazuya didn’t really believe the stranger would wait for him, but sure enough, the half-demon was pacing outside, and he followed after Kazuya when he went to the next shop. 

Kazuya fell in step beside him. “I forgot to ask last time, but, what’s your name?” 

He was silent for so long that Kazuya was afraid he wouldn’t answer at first, but he eventually responded, “Hitoshura.”

Hitoshura tailed him through his various stops purchasing weapons, medicine, rations, and other things he and Yuka needed. All were in the same large building which might have been a department store thirty years ago, the remains of which had been sectioned off into shops, an infirmary, a cathedral of shadows, and pretty much whatever people in town needed. The close proximity of the market was fortunate for Kazuya, as his leg wasn’t doing well that morning, another holdover from combat in the Great Cathedral. It was a microcosm of the hilltop settlement they’d arrived in as a whole – worn down and damaged, but still persisting and even thriving despite it all. 

Hitoshura was very obviously inhuman, but he never garnered more than a few second glances from shopkeepers and passers-by, not standing out as much as he might have even a year ago. From what Kazuya understood, Gaean rules about human fusion with demons used to be much stricter, with most who fused themselves punished by prison or death. Their star general at the Cathedral acquired enough fame and infamy that the rule was relaxed, creating an entire crop of people trying to emulate him. It had caused Kazuya to fight and kill more half-demons in red armor looking for revenge than he liked thinking about. Half-demons had become mundane enough, and Gaean influence in the area was low enough, that Hitoshura blended into the crowd. 

As little interest the surroundings paid to Hitoshura, the same could not be said for him. He was fascinated by the entire marketplace. He stared at passing strangers, gear sold by vendors between shops, and especially the robots in the junk shop – he watched a floating spherical droid that flew around the shop ceiling like a cat watched a bird. His distrust of Hitoshura steadily cooled as he observed him acting more like a brash tourist than anything, and it was comforting to be around someone else who saw some of it as unusual and worth a second glance, albeit for different reasons than his own.

As much as Hitoshura’s attention was drawn by his surroundings, it was drawn to Kazuya as well, in what he assumed was a carryover from his scrutiny of Kazuya’s identity from their last encounter. Kazuya repeatedly felt the stranger looking at him, though whenever he looked back at him he was always doing something else. The company was a welcome trade-off to the scrutiny, as it’d been a long time since he’d gone anywhere with someone new, but he didn’t know what was possibly left for the half-demon to be suspicious of. It accumulated into a question posed in the junk shop in the basement. 

“How did you learn about all this?” Hitoshura asked him over a bin of mostly broken computer parts.

Kazuya, who’d just joined him after talking to the owner about COMP modifications, assumed he referred to computers in general. “I taught myself a lot of it, and picked up things from message boards and people in stores. When the demon stuff happened, I kept doing that – I learned demon-summoning form others, and figured out a lot of it own my own. I still talk to people and find out as much about it as I can. I’m trying to learn to make the demon summoning program from scratch.” A process he was not especially good at, but he was working on it.

He tampered with a COMP that looked like it had been bitten in half. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

Kazuya shrugged. “It’s all I really had before, besides school, and it’s all I can do now. I have to be good at it, and keep improving as much as possible.” He’d been a poor shot even when he could use a gun, and bladed weapons couldn’t solve everything. COMP and demon summoning program was the best weapon he, and most people, had, and he owned it to others to be as competent as he could with it. “I just like programming stuff on it to,” he added, somewhat flatly. “I want to try making something with it one day, maybe music.” 

Hitoshura tossed the broken equipment back into the bin. “Nerd.” 

Kazuya stopped outside the shop to message Yuka that he was with the half-demon he told her about, and that he’d see her later than planned, while Hitoshura stared at the person across the aisle hawking old, mostly broken CDs. “Did you ever find better beer?” He asked while he typed out the message. 

He stared blankly at Kazuya for a moment before he grinned. “Not yet. It’s all worse than the stuff you gave me. I’ve been exploring, trying to find some demons worth fighting.” His face lit up in remembrance, and he shoved his inner arm at Kazuya’s face. “I fought a sea serpent a while ago, though, got this from it.” 

Kazuya’s attention, which had been preoccupied with how his leg was already starting to hurt, and what the best place to show Hitoshura some guns would be, snapped back to the present at the sight. The dark stripes on Hitoshura’s arm were interrupted by a long, barely healed gash. The skin around the injury was layered angry shades of red and yellow, and it was clearly infected.

His stomach dropped. Kazuya grabbed his hand and arm to get a better look at the wound. “Why didn’t you say anything?! I could have gotten medicine for it back at the pharmacy. Does it hurt? I can try the medicine I have now, but if that’s not enough Yuka should be able to – “

The half-demon shook his head. “This is literally just a scratch, it barely hurts. And it’s getting better, see?” 

Kazuya looked at the dreadful wound again. On second glance, the damaged flesh did seem to be repairing itself, so minutely that it easy to miss. When he looked away and back again after a few seconds, the skin had even regained some of its original color. The process would have fascinated him if it weren’t happening to someone he didn’t want getting hurt. 

“You should have seen it yesterday, it was way worse.” 

Kazuya was immensely relieved that he did not in fact see it the day before, considering the remains of the wound as it was nearly gave him a heart attack. He made himself relax with the knowledge that Hitoshura wasn’t going to collapse from demonic blood poisoning anytime soon. “Ah.”

Worries put to rest, Kazuya belatedly realized that he was still holding Hitoshura’s arm. He let go, and ignored the tingling sensation the contact left on his palms and fingers. The half-demon’s skin was rough and abrasive to the touch, like sharkskin.

Hitoshura tilted his head in confusion. “Why would you use Medicine instead of magic?” 

“I don’t have any magic,” he said. He’d assumed Hitoshura must have heard about it wen he first started asking around about him. “Would magic work better? I can ask some of my demons to heal it for you.” 

Once again, the confused expression he wore when they first met reappeared on the half-demon’s face. “It fixes itself on its own, most of the time,” Hitoshura said, “but food helps. It should be gone by now, but I haven’t eaten anything in a week.”

A week..? Kazuya didn’t know if his metabolism was different enough for it not to matter, or he sorely needed food but hadn’t been able to access any. Either way, he was putting an end to it. “Come on, let’s get some food.”

Hitoshura narrowed his eyes and leaned away from him. “Why?”

“Because it’s painful.” It had never been as long as week, but Kazuya had gone for days at a time without food, either because it ran out of because he was stuck in a place where he couldn’t get any more. He wasn’t going to let anyone else go through it if he could help it. 

After a lengthy, judgmental pause, Hitoshura agreed, which is how they ended up in a narrow kitchen attached to the junk shop that Kazuya had visited the day before. Chief among its recommendable factors was that it served food with animal meat, not demon meat. Demon meat was edible with treatment, but had to be salted to hell and back before it was anything close to safe.

Kazuya bought them soup, and the half demon downed two bowls in time took Kazuya to just start one. Not as hungry as Hitoshura, he was content to eat slowly, soak in the warmth of the enclosed space created by both the kitchen and the body heat of other patrons, and rest his leg. After Hitoshura stopped eating long enough to breathe, Kazuya took the chance to ask something he’d been wondering since they first met. “Did you fuse using a Cathedral of Shadows? I’ve never seen anyone with markings like yours before.”

He let out a garbled ‘no’ around a mouthful of soup, neglecting a spoon in favor of drinking straight from the bowl. He drained the rest of the broth and stacked it onto the first bowl. “It was a Magatama, the essence of a demon.” He said, wiping his mouth with the back of arm. The sea serpent wound already looked leagues better than it had an hour. “Or an organ, maybe. It’s a worm-looking thing than crawled in my eye. It lives here now,” he tapped black spike below his skull. “I’m guessing it does at least. There aren’t magatama here?”

It took Kazuya a moment to respond. He hadn’t expected Hitoshura to be so candid. “None that I’ve seen.” And he’d been around enough demon remains in various states of decay by now to have seen magatama, if they had any. 

Hitoshura inspected the bottom of his bowl, scraping it with the mostly ignored spoon for any leftover meat or broth. “Guess it’s just mine, then.”

If even that could differ between their worlds, he couldn’t imagine what else was different on the alternate Earth. He had too many questions, but started with one that would be easy for Hitoshura to answer. “Were there still demons around before the world ended?” 

For the first time since meeting him, the half-demon looked unsure. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much from before I became a demon.” He scowled, and Kazuya nearly flinched, though he assumed the expression wasn’t directed at him. “I don’t want to remember anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

A pang of sympathy rang through Kazuya’s chest when he imagined waking up alone, without knowing who or what you were. He’d had loss in his life, far too much, but at least he kept his identity through it all.

He checked his COMP while Hitoshura went to get a third bowl of soup. Yuka had messaged him back almost immediately after he’d messaged earlier: _hve fun on yr date!_

Kazuya snorted an almost-laugh, then pushed his bowl over to his companion when Hitoshura finished the new bowl and started eyeing his leftovers. 

He took him to a few more places after getting food, this time more to show Hitoshura things he might not have seen in his or other worlds than anything. The food had restored Hitoshura’s energy as well as fixed the festering wound in his arm, and he was both more at ease and more excitable than before. After leaving a sword seller, Kazuya caught sight of the sun, visible from a few dingy windows, already sinking towards the horizon. The bulk of the day had passed in a blink, and Kazuya barely noticed. 

He also barely noticed that he had, without thinking, started to walk back to the rooms he and Yuka were staying in. He stopped in his tracks. “I completely forgot about finding a gun for you.”

Hitoshura stopped short too, and almost ran into him. “The guns aren’t going anywhere, I can just come back another time.”

His leg had been hurting more and more as the day went on, and relief at the prospect of rest intermingled with icy guilt at not going to the one place he asked to go. “Are you sure?” 

The half-demon sighed in exasperation. “You’re practically limping as is, we’ll get it another time.” 

He and Yuka stayed in a block only recently converted into living spaces, essentially motel. Kazuya shivered as a gust of icy air hit him once they left the enclosed marketplace. His scarf wasn’t nearly enough to guard against the elements. Hitoshura didn’t so much at flinch at the drastic temperature change and looked at him like he was the one who’d had an odd reaction to the cold. Luckily the building wasn’t too far, and he made it without tripping or sliding on any ice, both avoiding embarrassing himself in front of his new acquaintance. 

Kazuya stopped just before the main front door to the place. Signs were hastily nailed above the doorway, advertising it to travelers and anyone else who might want to stay. “So you will be coming back?” he asked the half-demon.

Hitoshura was staring up at the slipshod, thoroughly worn down building. The top floors were broken down and near uninhabitable, and looked more like a deathtrap than anything unless one knew that the in-use areas were on the lower and sub levels. “Yeah. Can’t say when though. And, thanks, for the soup.” He added in a mutter, averting Kazuya’s gaze.

They still barely knew each other, but Kazuya liked being around Hitoshura, and learning about him, and felt small thrill of excitement that he would see him again. He smiled at him, pain in his leg forgotten. “I hope you come back soon, Hitoshura.” 

The half-demon returned it, though it was more smirk than smile, eyes alight with something he couldn’t place. “Don’t worry, pretty boy, I’ll be back before you know it.”

The source of the nickname was obvious even to him – his absent eye, and the scars that surrounded it were visible even past the borders of his eye patch, ensured would never be any kind of pretty, if he ever was – but the familiarity it implied made him hope the half-demon would really return. 

Yuka teased him in the following days about his ‘date’, but he ignored her, and her inquiries fell to the wayside in the face of everything else they had to do. Even without their reputations form Tokyo, they felt compelled to meddle, and in between finding more medicine, defending people from demons, in a few cases demons from people, and securing more food for the winter many people who didn’t have enough, there was plenty to keep them busy. But in rare moments of rest, Kazuya thought about half-demon, and hoped that he would return soon, more often and more fervently than he’d admit even to himself.


	3. Chapter 3

“The ears are sort of like a husky’s, and there’s sort of dolichocephalic muzzle, but the forearms are sort of like a fox’s , and I’ve never seen a tail that long on normal dog...” 

Kazuya scratched Hitoshura’s inugami on its head, and the demon’s tail, several meters away, wagged appreciatively. He continued to mutter to himself, “The coat and undercoat are both coarse, and the feet and nails are sort of wolf-ish…” 

Their discussion the last time they were together that Kazuya’s world, unlike Hitoshura’s, lacked magatama, had led to further comparisons between worlds when Hitoshura returned again. The odd, often frustrating nature of demons and demon negotiation were the same, but individual demons in their worlds differed. They went a ways away from the settlement before they summoned any demons to compare, as most people became rightfully nervous when large numbers of demons got summoned at once. 

Kazuya took it as an opportunity to reacquaint Hitoshura with Pascal, both because he knew Pascal’s demonic form was fairly unusual, and to let them interact in a less hostile atmosphere than they did the last time they met. Hitoshura treated Pascal with an unexpected amount of deference when Kazuya summoned him, almost more afraid of ill-treating him now as compared to before. Pascal, on the other hand, was as calm now around Hitoshura as if he’d known him all his life, running around him, licking him (Kazuya only just held himself back from laughter at the half-demon’s bewildered expression when, after an initial hesitant scratch, Pascal jumped up to lick his face), and even goading him into throwing a stick for him to fetch. He was still surprised Pascal hadn’t outgrown playing fetch when he’d become a demon, but old habits died hard, for Pascal at least. He still didn’t even speak much if he could help it. 

In return, Hitoshura summoned one of his own demons, a creature Kazuya had heard of but never seen in person, the black and white ghost dog Inugami. He expected inugami to look like a Japanese breed of dog, or a wild dog in general, but it possessed a blend of canine features, both domestic and wild. An academic curiosity as to what dog it most closely resembled quickly gave way to just appreciating how adorable the demon was. It apparently shared the same desire to be showered in attention that regular dogs did, and, in one step beyond its mortal cousins, the demon could twist itself in the air like an eel, so Kazuya could scratch wherever it wanted him to scratch. Eventually he settled on the ground, with the inguami’s head on Kazuya’s knee and the rest of its body strewn out like tangled garden hose. 

He was glad he hadn’t worn gloves despite the cold. He smoothed down the rough, wiry fur at the base of its head and down its neck. Its ear flicked, but otherwise its eyes stayed closed. The demon was clearly nodding off. “All of which adds up to a 100% good dog.”

He heard Pascal race off after the stick again, and heard Hitoshura climb up onto a rusted out car to wait for the canine. “Why do you know so much about dogs?” he asked Kazuya. 

He almost forgot Hitoshura was even there. “Pascal,” He said. Usually he’d keep the answer short, but the steady rhythm of petting Inugami was relaxing enough for words to come more easily than they might otherwise. “I wanted to know as much as I could about dogs so I could take care of him right, and I ended up getting really into it. I liked learning about all different breeds and histories.” Pascal returned while he spoke, carrying a branch the size of a small tree in his jaws, and lay down under the car Hitoshura was perched on. Kazuya probably should have stopped talking, but Hitoshura’s gaze was attentive, and he didn’t look annoyed, so he continued. “I got most of it from books at the library, we couldn’t afford to buy a ton of books then, but my –“ A sudden lump rose in his throat, but he fought it down. “My mother, she bought me a used book on dog breeds. I got interested in computers pretty soon after that, but I still remember stuff from then.”

It always sat on top of the bookshelf under his bedroom window, alongside school notebooks and secondhand manuals, its green and white spine so constant he stopped really seeing it after awhile. It probably burned up when the bombs fell. Or rotted away in the 30 years that he’d been gone. Or disintegrated in the floodwaters.

His eye burned. Kazuya blinked rapidly and turned his face away from the half-demon. Inugami was snoring now, its front paws twitching slightly in its sleep. Hitoshura got to his feet and walked over to him. “Let me move him, he coils in his sleep and it’s a pain in the ass to untangle.”

He gestured at the demon and it vanished instantly. Kazuya got to his feet and stretched. Pascal wandered over, and sniffed at the stray hairs Inugami left on his pants. “I’m glad it warmed up to me so quickly.” 

Damn it, his voice sounded hoarse. He thought he saw Hitoshura’s pupils contract slightly, but it was gone when he blinked. “It makes sense,” the half-demon said slowly, like he was figuring out the answer as he spoke. “You smell nice, so that probably put him at ease.” 

He coughed out a laugh, more from surprise than anything, and returned Pascal to his COMP. He didn’t want him to have to walk home in the cold. “ I’ve gotten to take more showers recently than in awhile, but I don’t think I smell that good.”

“Not nice-good. Nice like, nice-kind.” He frowned, struggling for the right words. “Like, patient and generous. It’s smell and feeling together, I can’t really describe it if you can’t sense it to begin with.” 

Kazuya had never heard of such a thing, but to be fair, he’d never asked a demon something like that before. It did explain why some demon negotiations he’d started in the past had felt like the demon decided what he was like before he even spoken. “That’s something you can smell? Or feel?” 

Hitoshura nodded. “Most of the time it’s a bad thing.” He said bluntly. “You’re the kind of nice that usually means you’d be easier to trick and take advantage of. But you’re still around, so it must work for you. Somehow.” He glared at him as if he were an especially vexing puzzle. “Though my demons usually like friends to begin with.” 

A sudden sharpness twisted Kazuya’s heart. “We’re friends?” Kazuya asked. His voice still croaked slightly from unshed tears. He hoped Hitoshura didn’t hear it, but with the half-demon’s heightened sense of hearing and his proximity, it would be impossible to miss. 

Hitoshura rolled his eyes and punched him in the arm – lightly for him, but his strength and Kazuya’s relative not-strength made it hurt more than he likely intended. “Would I still be here if I wasn’t?”

Kazuya gripped his arm where it’d been punched, but even that monetary pain couldn’t surpass the smile that threatened to break out on his face. But Hitoshura’s reply conjured something else, a memory, so faded it had nearly been forgotten entirely.

 

_“Are we friends?”_

_It took a few moments for the question to register for Yuji and Takeshi. Hazes of exhaustion clouded their eyes from days of travel and fighting. Kazuya wasn’t in much better shape. His body was strained from constant fighting, and his mind and spirit were strained from grief at the death around him. The despair around them embodied itself in the dead and shattered trees that overshadowed them while they rested somewhere outside Shibuya._

_Yuji considered the question, tilting his head in thought. The motion dislodged hair covering his forehead, revealing a scar inflicted by a demon they’d fought the day before. “Maybe not in the traditional sense. We’re together for survival, mainly. But I still think we are. I like your company. Both of yours,” He said, and nodded at Takeshi._

_“Why do you care?” he asked Kazuya, instead of acknowledging Yuji._

_Before, he might have flinched at Takeshi’s harsh, dismissive tone, but he was too tired now to react much. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself. “I don’t, I was just wondering.” The dearth of anyone close in his life had left him without any way to isolate and identity feelings of friendship. This wouldn’t help him win any battles, or stay alive, or mourn, but he still wanted to know._

_He rolled away from both of them, and dead silence returned to fill the spaces around and in them._

_The quiet was broken by the least likely source. “If I had to have friends,” Takeshi said at last, voice quieter than the wind, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be heard, “you wouldn’t be the worst ones to have.”_

 

A hand on shoulder pulled him up from the memory. Hitoshura was looking at him, trepidation in his eyes. “Kazuya?” 

He sniffed, and scrubbed the heel of his hand against his eye. “It’s nothing,” he said, voice even worse than it was before. “Just remembering something.”

He didn’t mention any of what he told Hitoshura again, and assumed the incident and his story were forgotten by Hitoshura until he handed, or practically threw, rather, a book at him the next time they met, after Hitoshura had left for other words for an extended time. It was a small, green book about dogs, its first pages and cover nearly destroyed by water but remarkably whole otherwise. He kept it by his worktable, and it takes a very long time for him to be able to look at it and not feel something flip over in his chest.


	4. Chapter 4

It took a long time for them to get around to buying gun for Hitoshura. Kazuya was often busy, and when he wasn’t, Hitoshura was absent, away in his own world or another. By the time their schedules narrowly intersected, it was the dead of winter and snow was piled up everywhere. It wasn’t safe enough to go anywhere outside the settlement to find better guns, but Kazuya jumped on the chance to show his friend what was available at the least disreputable gun shop in the area, despite the extremely long day Kazuya had had beforehand. 

The mystery of why Hitoshura wanted a gun was as straightforward as the person himself – he wanted one because he wanted one, from curiosity more than any real need, and there weren’t any readily available in his own world or most others he’d been to. The answer to why he wanted Kazuya to help him find one was of a similar ilk, and made Kazuya flush in embarrassment – “Because I trust you. Relatively speaking.” 

Kazuya found him guns, and besides that, gave him lessons on how to use one. He reviewed basic safety, cleaning it, how to handle it so he didn’t shoot himself or anyone else, and other ground rules (everything help him avoid embarrassments like Kazuya went through when he first started using a gun and nearly short off his own foot), and showed him how to use it in a practice range. He was exhausted from the day he’d had, but they were facts he could have recited in his sleep. Hitoshura didn’t buy one in the end, despite myriad options, and Kazuya promised to take him to a better shop when the snow melted, maybe back to Ginza.

That no one had been killed or seriously wounded made it a rousing success in Kazuya’s eyes, and he invited Hitoshura to a bar afterward as a reward and to find out what he’d been doing since he saw him last. 

They got in before the evening crowd, and Kazuya snagged a small table for them in the back. It was one of the last in the area, ever since a fight between two demon summoners a while back took out the other table. One of them died in the bar, but the lighting was bad enough to miss bloodstains in the floor. Remixes of songs he’d heard in middle school played over the broken speakers. No one in the bar looked at them twice when he got drinks, water for himself and something dubiously alcoholic for Hitoshura, as per request.

“If you don’t want any from around here,” Kazuya said, “you can have one of mine, I don’t really use them anymore.”

Hitoshura stared hard at Kazuya, and then took a long drink of whisky. From the way his face twisted, it wasn’t especially good. “I don’t get it.” 

“Don’t get what?” 

“How you’re still alive.” His eyes, nearly illuminated in the gloom, made Kazuya’s stomach flip in a resurgence of nerves. “You’re small, you don’t have any magic, and you trust way too easily. But you’re still around.”

“Um.” He’d never had to defend his survivability before, and was at a loss for words trying to explain what he himself often had a hard time understanding. He stared down at the stained tabletop, as if the wood grains would tell him what to say. “Luck’s part of it, I guess,” He said. Though the luck never extended to anyone else he knew. Death followed him like a shadow. “It’s mostly because I’m not alone.” Even if he should be. “I have Yuka, and my demons, and they’re really the only reason I’m still here.” 

Hitoshura made a flat ‘hm’ sound and took another sip, clearly not convinced. Kazuya tried to shake himself from the dour turns his thoughts had taken, and watched the markings on Hitoshura’s face and throat as he drank. “Can you actually get drunk?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “But it takes really strong stuff, way more than this to just get buzzed. Not sure I’d want to though, tastes weird.”

Kazuya felt an influx of embarrassment that the bar’s drink wasn’t good enough, either. “Do you want to get something else? I can order something else, or we can leave and go –.”

“It’s not a big deal,” He interrupted him, putting the glass down. “I’ll just try something else. And besides, you promised awhile ago I could see the COMP, I can’t leave before that.” 

Hitoshura tried a variety of drinks through the evening as the ocean of customers ebbed and flowed. Since Kazuya got to see the half-demon summon and return demons once before, he’d agreed to give the half-demon his COMP to examine as much as he wished. He examined it now in the bar, holding it, trying it on, and paging through some of the main functions.

“How the hell do you fight with this?” He asked in disbelief. “It’s like fighting with a brick tied to your arm.”

“You get used to it.” Kazuya said. “I’ve made it pretty durable, so that might be where most of the weight comes from. You could probably throw it at a brick wall and it’d stay in one piece. Not,” he suddenly added, seeing the expression that bloomed on Hitoshura’s face, “that that’s a challenge. Please don’t throw my COMP at a wall, I need it.” 

“You’re no fun,” the half-demon said, but gave the device back anyway. 

“I can just build you your own, you now. “ Kazuya said. 

Hitoshura perked back up again. “Really?” 

“Sure! I’ve had enough practice by now that it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.

Though judging by how Hitoshura lit up when he mentioned throwing the COMP at a wall, Kazuya was probably setting himself up to repair any COMP he gave the half-demon indefinitely. He would still do it, though, if it would make him happy (and end any temptation to throw his own things.) 

 

\-----

 

Conversation meandered through the hours, and eventually settled on relationships, Hitoshura’s relationships in particular. Kazuya knew from several offhanded mentions by Hitoshura that the half-demon had friends, and even several boyfriends, in different worlds, but he still didn’t know any of their actual names. It was a bit strange to him, that someone so remote and almost feral, apparently had so many personal ties.

“How do you not know them by now?” He asked Kazuya incredulously over another glass of something, he wasn’t sure what. 

“Because you mention their asses at least twice as much as their actual names.”

The best word for the half-demon’s expression at that was ‘unrepentant’. 

He didn’t know where any of them lived either, except for one called Raidou, who, as far as Kazuya understood, lived in an alternate version of the past. “Do you have any boyfriends from your own world?”

He shook his head. “No, just in others. Not a lot of options in mine. I met Raidou in my world, but that doesn’t count. You know him, right? I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned him before.”

“I know his ass, mostly,” Kazuya answered, and Hitoshura snickered into his glass. 

Kazuya liked the fondness that appeared on the half-demon’s face whenever he talked about his boyfriends. His eyes softened, and his lips curved into an almost-smile he probably wasn’t aware he was making. It was a quiet display of simple happiness, a rarity in the dangerous, violent worlds they both lived in. “Have you found anyone here you’re interested in?” 

Hitoshura pensively swirled the remaining liquid in his glass. One of the flickering overhead lights shorted out completed, shading area of the bar in an extra layer of darkness. His pupils had widened in the lowered light when he looked at Kazuya. “Sort of, yeah.” He said, voice uncharacteristically soft. 

The answer definitely caught him by surprise. He didn’t think Hitoshura knew many others on a personal basis in his world, aside from himself, and maybe Yuka, though he’d only met her once. “That’s great! I hope it works out with whoever it is you like.” 

Hitoshura stared at him until he blushed self-consciously. “What?”

“Nothing.” He answered as he got up. “I just need more sake than I thought.” 

Kazuya waited for him to return, and found to his distant surprise that he was suddenly struggling to keep his head up and that his eyes were inexplicably heavy. He blinked, and Hitoshura was back in the seat across from him, two new drinks on the table. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing, I’m just – “ He interrupted himself with a sudden jaw-cracking yawn, “- just a bit tired.”

Hitoshura narrowed his eyes. “What have you been doing all day?”

He fought through a thickening fog of exhaustion to respond. “Killed a demon, worked on COMP repairs, or, no, first I helped out with Yuka at the infirmary, a lot of people are sick, fought a demon, more COMP repairs, but,” he gave up trying get events I order, “that was last night. Fought another demon –“

The half-demon’s expression hovered somewhere between bemused and alarmed. “Rephrasing. When was the last time you slept?”

He thought. Then thought some more. Thinking was not coming easily. “A day and a half?” The adrenaline of a fight, or the focus demanded for completing a task at hand, were usually enough to keep him going, but without anything to focus on the fatigue was quickly catching up.

“Okay.” Hitoshura said, and swallowed contents of one of the glasses in a gulp. “We’re leaving, and you’re going to get some sleep.” 

He almost protested that he could sleep later, and that he wanted be with Hitoshura for as long as he would be around, but real sleep was so tantalizing that he followed the half-demon out of the bar without protest. The frigid night air burned sharply in his lungs and throat, rough and awful. He stumbled more than walked back to his and Yuka’s rooms, and Hitoshura matched his slow pace.

Hitoshura grabbed his sleeve, pulled him to his side before he tripped over a sizeable patch of ice. “Watch yourself, pretty boy.”

Kazuya forgot any nerves and decorum he might have had otherwise, and walked closer to Hitoshura, so close that their sides pressed together and Kazuya could warm himself with the almost alarming amount of body heat Hitoshura gave off. “Are you leaving again?” It wasn’t what he meant to ask, but the fear had suddenly moved to forefront of his mind and tongue.

“Nah, going to look around some more. I’ll be here tomorrow.” He looked around at the snow, and brushed falling snowflakes out of his hair. “Not many places to go right now, anyway.” 

Kazuya nodded, and nearly pitched forward again before Hitoshura caught him. 

Fait ambient light from the surrounding buildings, mostly white some scattered neon, reflected off of Hitoshura’s skin and hair. Kazuya was filled with a nameless emotion, stirred up by Hitoshura’s closeness and his steadying hand on his arm and talking to him all night in the bar, something he couldn’t describe as anything other than a futile kind of longing, directed towards the person beside him. But it didn’t make sense. He’d wanted to get to know him all those weeks ago, and he had, and he liked him, very much. What else could he want? Intuition screamed at him that the answer was right before him, if only looked closer, looked from a different angle, but in the struggle to not collapse entirely, he didn’t dwell on it very much. 

Kazuya didn’t remember getting back, but he recalled fragments the next day, like getting to door, Yuka helping to his room, and waking in the early hours the next morning in his own bed, confused for a minute as to how he got there. 

He slept straight through the night and most of the morning. Upon waking, most of the night’s events filtered back to him, but any emotions or near-revelations he might have thought and felt the previous night were forgotten.


	5. Chapter 5

The pieces of one of their new neighbor’s COMP lay in several pieces on the crooked table before Kazuya. His room, though small, had the luxuries of a small, broken table, and electricity, and he spent more time in the desk working than in bed. Many nights were spent sleepless for one reason or another, and he preferred to work through them, or try to at least. 

He no longer dreamed in omens, but there were plenty of night terrors to take their place. They were usually nebulous events assembled piecemeal from disasters he’d seen and caused, so that on some nights he returned home to find Yuji and Takeshi dead on the floor of his living room, killed by Amanojaku, and on other nights he was trapped within Cathedral again and had to kill his mother. It was actually when Hitoshura took up his own place in these nightmares that Kazuya realized how close he’d become to him. 

It was not bad dreams that kept him up that particular night, but a much more inconsequential problem that should not be thinking about as much as he was. The COMP was supposed to be an effective distraction and easy enough fix, but he kept drifting off to stare at the wall without really seeing it, lost in thoughts from the day before. 

 

\-----

 

“Did you have to fight the entire flock of Sytry?” Yuka asked as she moved her hands over Kazuya’s deeply bruised shoulder, palms alight with healing magic. He was seated in the one chair in his room, and Yuka was very kindly healing his many injuries so he didn’t have to take the time to go to the Infirmary. Already a skilled healer, she had steadily improved recently, and could fix most superficial damage quickly and nearly painlessly. 

“We didn’t fight all of them.” He protested, then flinched as a newly repaired nerve twinged. “Just, most of them.” 

She reached into the kit beside her and pulled out swab and disinfectant for the cuts and bites on his face and arms. Dia spells couldn’t always protect from infections after the fact. “Believe it or not,” she said as she pressed dampened cloth to his forearm, “I have better things to do than clean after you and your boyfriend’s adventures. I have a life, or I’m trying to anyway.” 

The relative quiet that surrounded Hitoshura’s initial time in Kazuya’s world had been broken by the arrival of spring, as if the return of the sun and above freezing temperatures gave people energy to start trouble again. That some demons woke from winter dormancy around this time of year, and woke up hungry, certainly didn’t help. He and Kazuya spent many more of their days fighting together as compared to the winter months.

Hitoshura did not have a problem with this at all, and leapt into skirmishes with a vigor Kazuya had rarely seen from him before. Being able to fight alongside him was like meeting him for the first time all over again. All he knew of Hitoshura, his intelligence, precision, aggressiveness, were all so much more vivid, as if it were their true origin. The half-demon lit up in battle, both figuratively and literally, eyes blazing golden and the blue glow around his tattoos flaring like fire. He was near untouchable, no mater what he fought, or how many he fought. It was like seeing him do what he was created for, and was no less breathtaking no matter how many times Kazuya saw it.

For all his skill, though, he was still reckless, hence him charging six very large, very angry Sytry at once earlier that day. Without thinking, Kazuya rushed in to help, and while they won in the end, he was thoroughly beaten and bitten by the end of it. His demons helped the worst of he damage, but he didn’t want them or Hitoshura to waste their magic on healing in case they were attacked on the way home, though the half-demon had insisted. Hitoshura had been hurt worse than him, but his injuries all fixed themselves within an hour. 

The request had been to find the remains of a child abducted by the feline demons, but in an unparalleled miracle, the flock had been saving the child to eat later. He was alive, and rightfully terrified, when Pascal finally tracked him down. They’d gotten him out mostly unscathed, so Kazuya couldn’t regret going.

But he still should have known better than to charge into the middle of them like that. In his needless risk-taking, he’d also inadvertently torn Yuka away from her work or the friends she’d just started making, now that she didn’t have to live constantly running and hiding from Messians or Ozawa’s forces. “I’m sorry.” 

She patted him once on his uninjured shoulder and moved on to his hand. “It’s fine, I’m just kidding. It is nice seeing you send time with someone new for once.” 

He scratched absently at the newly healed skin on his upper arm. “I spend time with people.”

“People who aren’t me or Pascal.”

He couldn’t really argue with that. 

A tiny flare of light signaled that last cut had been healed. Yuka started to put away the disinfectant and cloth, but something she’d said was stuck in Kazuya’s mind, and he wanted to ask her about it before she left. “Why do you keep calling him my boyfriend?”

“Hitoshura?” She put the first aid kit back on the shelf before facing him again, genuine confusion lacing her voice. “Because he is, isn’t he?”

It slowly dawned on him that she may have been saying what she had for so long because of a misunderstanding rather than ongoing teasing. He slipped his eyepatch back on, which had new stains of blood on it he’d have to try to get out later. “No, he’s just my friend. Why did you think he was my boyfriend?”

She rested back against the wall and looked down at him. “Mostly because of you.” She answered, and began listing reasons on her fingers. “Ever since he started showing up you haven’t stopped talking about him, you spend a lot of time with him whenever he’s here, and the way you look at him when he’s not looking at you is very lovesick teenager. I haven’t seen you this happy in – ever, actually. Not to mention –” 

“ T-that’s because I like him! But, not like that,” he said, backtracking. “I like being around him as a friend.”

She still didn’t look convinced. “Then…are you sure he doesn’t like you?”

He looked at her like she said the sky was green. “What?”

“He calls you ‘pretty boy.’”

“It’s ironic!” he protested, and tapped on the patch. Or, he was almost certain it was meant to be ironic. He’d never asked.

“Alright,” she said, and let the matter drop, turning to leave, and Kazuya turned chair around to start working on the COMP laid out on the desk. 

He heard Yuka pause in the doorway. “It’s not a bad thing, you know, if you do like him.” She said. His jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond, and she left. 

 

\-----

 

He didn’t like him. 

As many times as he thought it, it didn’t stop the doubts Yuka’s question raised from spiraling endlessly through his brain, and repairs that shouldn’t have taken more than a few hours stretched on into the night as he kept losing what he was doing. His back ached from being in the chair for so long, but he knew if he lay down he still probably wouldn’t get any rest. When he once again nearly dropped one of the COMP pieces to the floor, he groaned quietly and dropped his head into his hands, the light of the desk lamp burning his eye through the eyelid. 

He liked Hitoshura because they were friends. He thought about Hitoshura a lot, certainly, but that was normal, people thought about people they care about. It was normal to be happy when he saw the half-demon again, normal to want to protect him even though he didn’t really need it, normal that his heart beat faster when he smiled at him, normal to get distracted daydreaming about him sometimes, especially when imagning what his skin felt like sometimes – 

Oh. He saw Yuka’s point, now. 

(By extension, this probably meant he was gay, or at least liked men. It wasn’t a surprise, exactly. Kazuya had never gave much thought to his own orientation, as he wasn’t around people his own age much when he was in school, and he was too worried about survival after demons first appeared to care about romance. That he was, or might be, gay, was as much of a possibility as anything else.)

Whether he had a crush or not (although the leaden feeling in his chest signaled that he probably did), it wouldn’t matter. There was not way on any Earth that Hitoshura would like him back, and he liked being his friend too much to risk that. 

And more importantly, his conscious reprimanded him, it wouldn’t be fair to Hitoshura. Kazuya was putting him in enough danger just being his friend, and even then any time he was hurt or nearly hurt it dredged up old terrors. Anything more and he was painting a bright red target on his back.

He picked up his head and leaned in to work on the device, energy renewed with his new resolution. He would ignore whatever he was feeling, and without attention it would shrivel up and die and not jeopardize anything.


	6. Chapter 6

The doubts spawned by Yuka’s observations and Kazuya’s own realization created a hyperawareness of Hitoshura whenever he was close to him, which was fairly often. Despite his standoffishness when they first met, the half-demon was actually fond of casual physical contact. He still punched him in the arm sometimes (and it still hurt), but he didn’t spare much mind to other casual touches. Every time he brushed Kazuya’s arm, or learned in close to look at something he was working on, even once when he hugged him, a blush raced across his face and his attention fixated in ways it shouldn’t have. To make matters worse, just being around him was becoming distracting, with Hitoshura’s rare smile being especially disorienting. All of this fueled the antithetical blend of happiness, embarrassment and dread that tore at his mind daily. 

Fortunately for his state of mind, he still had daily distractions, and one that both helped and hindered was teaching Hitoshura about knives. The half-demon had eventually bought a few, from the same store he’d surprised Kazuya in, and asked Kazuya to show him how to use them. He didn’t need them, as he had magic, claws, and sheer strength for weapons, but he was still curious. Kazuya, excited about sharing one of his interests with Hitoshura in a way that wouldn’t get anyone hurt, began to give him lessons on how to use it and defend himself from it, without consideration to how the prolonged time with Hitoshura might complicate his situation. 

He held practices in a former park, at the heart of which grew young trees, grasses, and flowers, all flourishing in burnt, tarnished soils. The ground was soft in case either was knocked over (which Kazuya had assumed he himself would be, many times), and beyond that, he just liked being there. As much time as he spent indoors in his youth, he never thought he’d miss the sounds of wind in the trees. The old park was peaceful, despite the remains of fences and shacks strewn about, and with enough time, the scars would be covered by overgrowth completely (though he could still do without the bugs). 

Hitoshura proved to be an attentive student, for the most part. He listened to Kazuya when he explained basic self-defense techniques and how to use different kinds of knives, and when they practiced Hitoshura held back from just overwhelming with his supernatural strength and attempted to use what Kazuya taught him. Hitoshura’s talent in combat extended to use with handheld weaponry, and Kazuya felt a thrill of pride at seeing his friend improve so quickly. He wanted to see how the half-demon would do with swords, if he ever wanted to try them. 

Though he still had his limits. Sometimes near the end of practices Hitoshura would attack him, Kazuya suspected from boredom, either head on or by surprise, and knock him to the ground to fight, sending the practice knives flying off into the grass somewhere. He didn’t use his strength there either, putting them on a (very) slightly more even keel, and Kazuya actually loosened up and had fun with it. By the point his patience broke Kazuya had usually shown him everything he wanted to anyway. 

The closeness to and attention of his maybe-crush should have flustered him, and it occasionally did, but there was usually enough activity otherwise (often Kazuya losing a fight) that he could take his mind of it. Usually. 

At the end of one particular practice in the middle of spring, when the sun was really shining for the first time in months, the trend broke. When Hitoshura changed his stance right as their practice started, Kazuya knew what to expect, and fell with the motion as he knocked him down. He coughed out a breath when his back hit the grass. “We just started, how are you bored already?”

“I know this shit already.” 

“It’s still important to practice, though.”

“Exactly! If you practice this maybe you won’t get knocked down so quick.”

All of this was spoken in broken sentences between short breaths as each tried to pin the other to claim victory. Kazuya seemed tantalizingly close to a win when he caught Hitoshura’s arm in a lock. But before he pressed his advantage, the half-demon pulled his arm free as if it didn’t have bones at all, grabbed him, and pushed onto his back, straddling him and pining his arms. New grass tickled the nape of his neck, and what felt like a tree root dug into the back of his head. Kazuya tried twisting his wrists around pull them free, though he knew it wasn’t much use against Hitoshura’s iron grip. He went limp, signaling defeat. 

“Do half-demons have extra joints?” He gasped, still trying to get his breath back.

Teeth flashed at him as Hitoshura grinned. “Nope. You’re just not very good at this, pretty boy.” He let go of Kazuya’s wrists, and his hands tingled as the blood flowed back. He leaned back somewhat, but didn’t move. 

Kazuya stopped to think of a proper response, and in that second registered the weight on his abdomen and recognized that Hitoshura was still on top of him. This happened before, it was usually how he won, but Kazuya couldn’t understand why on that day of all days staring up at him from his back was so distracting. 

He hoped the half-demon chalked up the red quickly spreading across his face to physical exertion. 

“Can you let me up?” he asked, and winced at the sound of his voice, cracked with nerves. He desperately searched for anything to mention that might draw attention from how he looked and sounded. “And shouldn’t we be past the pretty boy nickname by now?”

Hitoshura moved aside and held out a hand, helping him to his feet. “What’s wrong with the nickname?” 

Kazuya stumbled to his feet, ignoring the ache in his back from where he first hit the ground. “Nothing. It’s just, I know you gave it to me because of my eye, but maybe, you know me well enough for a different one by now?” 

“What?” His face was blank in innocent surprise. “That’s not why I call you that.”

It wasn’t? “Why, then?” He asked, and regretted as soon as it left his mouth. A knot of foreboding formed in his stomach, sudden surety that the answer to his question might destabilize what he was trying to maintain.

Kazuya had ended up close to he after getting to his feet, but the half-demon didn’t move away, or, he noticed with a blush threatening to break out again, take his hand back. He shouldn’t have looked at his eyes. “Because you really are pretty,” Hitoshura said, voice and gaze soft like it was all those weeks ago at the bar. “It’s not that complicated.” 

Kazuya didn’t know how to explain why he did it, other than a situational lapse of reason. Hitoshura was close and warm, and for a moment affection overrode fear. Kazuya closed the already narrow space between them and kissed him.

The half-demon stilled in apparent shock, but made no motion to push Kazuya away. For a tranquil instant, he thought of nothing else but how warm Hitoshura’s mouth was, but when he pulled away, the emotional turmoil he’d wrestled with for so long rushed back in, twice as intense as before. 

He couldn’t bring himself to look at Hitoshura. A torrent of words on the tip of his tongue – explanations, apologies for putting his unrequited feelings on him like that, some blend of the two, all fought to be the first said. Before he could say anything, though, the half-demon’s free hand cupped his face (and he noticed, though the mixture of confusion/fear/joy, that the skin of the half-demons palms and fingers was softer than his other skin) and he kissed him back. 

It became immediately obvious to Kazuya, now that he had an example to compare himself to, that he did not know how to kiss. His had been a clumsy, desperate press of his mouth, while Hitoshura’s was slower and displayed obvious experience. He pulled Kazuya closer, until he felt, or thought he felt, the half-demon’s body heat through his clothes. He imagined what it would feel like to be even closer to him, and the mere thought of it sent a jolt of something electric shooting down his spine. It was the first time Kazuya had really been aware of the presence of another person’s body, at least like this. Some of his fingers rested on a pulse point below his jaw, and Kazuya wondered in the back of his mind if he could feel his heart was racing. 

It was what he always stopped himself from wanting, and to suddenly have it felt like a dream. It took the roughness of Hitoshura’s face against his and the brush of pointed fangs on his lower lip to drag back to reality. Guilt laced through the contented haze, sharp as a blade in his gut. He pulled away and pushed on Hitoshura’s chest, motioning for him to stop (and remembering for the first time in a long time that he was not in fact wearing a shirt). 

Hitoshura smiled at him when they broke the kiss. “I was going to do that eventually.” He said, now sounding out of breath, if only fractionally. 

Kazuya pushed down guilt that had only redoubled in the brightness of Hitoshura’s happiness. “I’m sorry,” He said, to Hitoshura’s face this time, because he deserved that much. “I’m sorry I’m sorry. Can you just, forget that happened?”

“What?” Confusion was eroding the happiness from before, and he moved back from him. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because, um.” Why now of all times was his throat locking up with nerves? He took the rest in a rush before he was too scared to speak at all. “Because I like you.”

Hitoshura stared at him, as if waiting for Kazuya to add to that, and then laughed a bit when he didn’t. “Well, yeah, I sort of figured that out.” 

“I like you,” He confessed again, “A lot, and I wasn’t going to say anything because I can’t date you or do that again, not that it’s your fault, it isn’t, it’s mine, and I would like to do that again, if you wanted to too, but I can’t, and –“

“Wait, wait, slow down.” Hitoshura interrupted. He almost reached out, like he wanted to touch him, but stopped himself. “Just, breathe, for a second. What’s wrong?” 

Anything good he might have felt soured in his stomach. He didn’t think it would hurt this much. “People I know, every person I’ve ever been remotely close to, they’ve gotten hurt, and they’ve died, and every time I think maybe it’s over it happens again.” His hands had started shaking at some point, he didn’t know when. “I understand that I didn’t directly cause it, but it still feels like it. I think about being with you, and I just…”

He trailed off, heartsick. “I get scared. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” It was equal parts concern for Hitoshura’s well-being and more selfish reasons – Kazuya didn’t want to grieve the loss of another person he cared about.

It didn’t make sense, and he knew that, and shame at having shown superstitious and weak he was to someone he cared for overshadowed anything else he felt. He waited for Hitoshura to get frustrated, or eve more confused, or angry at his strange reasoning, but he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he took back the hand he’d held before, loosely enough that Kazuya could easily break free if he wanted. 

“For what it’s worth,” Hitoshura said, more gentle than Kazuya would have though possible before he kissed him, “I like you too. A lot. But we don’t have to get together if you’re not ready, if you don’t want to.”

The time they’d spent together were good, and Hitoshura had quickly added to the extremely small fold of people he really trusted. Apart from his recent turmoil over his feelings, Kazuya had felt better than he had in a long time, better than he thought he would feel again, better than he thought he deserved, sometimes. He wanted to keep being with Hitoshura. But his life was dangerous, both their lives were, and death was a very real possibility, even without them knowing each other. If Hitoshura died too…

The silence between and around them weighed on Kazuya like a yoke around his neck. Even the wind had stopped, leaving the new leaves on the trees conspicuously silent. He gripped Hitoshura’s hand, and his own hands stopped trembling, somewhat. 

“I haven’t done this before, and not sure if going be able to stop being afraid.” Kazuya said, breaking the too long pause. Hitoshura watched him, gaze steady and carefully neutral. For someone who acted out so many of his instinct and passions without a second though, he could be surprisingly reticent. Kazuya tried to smile at him, but was sure it came out fractured. “But I want to try. With you.” 

The half-demon’s mouth twitched, like wanted to smile again, but he held himself back. He did pull him a near crushing hug, and Kazuya returned it, letting out a sigh that had been building for weeks. The release of tension that had been worsening for weeks, and the nascent, building joy at having his feelings returned, made him simultaneously weak and light as air. It was more than he’d dared hope for. Kazuya walked closely to Hitoshura on the way back, both for support and just because he could, and the frequent brushing of their hands and arms barely sparked any fear at all. 

 

_Epilogue_

“Did you give it the new casing?” Hitoshura asked, turning the COMP over in his hands. 

Kazuya made a quiet hum of affirmation. He and the half-demon lay on Kazuya’s bed at some indeterminate time in the afternoon, when the sky was just fading from orange to blue. Kazuya lay with his head on Hitoshura’s chest, while Hitoshura inspected the new COMP he’d given him. He wasn’t most comfortable person to lie on; despite his relatively small frame he was all dense, sinewy muscle, but Kazuya still enjoyed it, even when he wasn’t remotely tired. 

Without opening his eyes, Kazuya added, “It’ll last longer if you stop getting viruses from looking up porn.”

“No promises,” He said, and ran his hand through Kazuya’s hair, claws slightly grazing his scalp. 

It had taken him a long time to get here. He’d eased into the relationship bit by bit, like edging into freezing water. The feeling that something was always close to disaster, and that it would be because of him somehow, never completely went away, but he was learning that it could be managed and lived with. And getting to be with Hitoshura was certainly worth it.

The muscles in Hitoshura’s shoulder moved as he put the COMP away, then curl up around Kazuya, nuzzling his face into his boyfriend’s neck. 

Hitoshura kissed him softly. “I’m going to go out and try throwing it” 

Apart from a chipped screen, it stayed in one piece.


End file.
